Suppose for a moment it wasn’t Will Smith that got up from his seat, climbed up on the stage, and “slapped the sh*t outta” Chris Rock. Suppose his wife Jada had done the same thing. Her doing that would have blocked Will from, as Hollywood and university Gender Studies theorists…

My beloved wife died a bit more than six months ago, and I still can’t orient myself to a life that’s mine alone. Like a fish that remains unaware of the water it’s always lived in, I lived a life that was always about “we.” What happened to us? What…

A new leader emerged in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s. A man who fought in the trenches in World War I, and was awarded the Iron Cross. He survived the horrors that claimed millions of his countrymen. He suffered long bouts of homelessness and unemployment. Driven by the…

There is a great divide between life as it is experienced, and life as it is remembered. Vast stretches of my days are indistinguishable from each other. These are the common days: days spent getting up, going to work, and meeting the demands to make a living and provide for…

Nearly 50 years ago, the much younger me noticed that quite a few black woman on the subway were reading a book called “Pimp” — the autobiography of Iceberg Slim. At the same time, at my job I overheard an older black coworker tell her friend on the phone how…

The dream is dead. Not for everyone, of course. Some of those who consider themselves oppressed will still demand equality, because they’ve been convinced that inspiring oratory, fervent marching and occasional outbreaks of looting can move mountains. That’s what the history books and media narratives tell them. “The arc of…

During the past few months, more and more “Dear White People” stories have started appearing on my Medium home page. Quite often that phrase appears verbatim in the title, but even when those words don’t appear, the phrase accurately captures the haughty, condescending tone of the essays. The essays pretend…

I’ve always been fascinated with subcultures — like the Hasidim, Amish and Gypsies — that stubbornly maintain their separation from modern life. I find them inspiring, because they demonstrate that there remain ways to leave modern life behind, and live another way. To submerge ourselves once again in the way…

Early last spring I took a walk along Westhampton Beach, heading west from Cupsogue State Park towards the Moriches Bay Inlet. It was early in the year, the park was only sparsely populated, and as I got closer to the inlet I found myself totally alone, even though as the…